In the newest issue of Kieron Gillen and Greg Land’s ‘Iron Man’, Tony Stark has tracked down yet another buyer of Extremis in the form of a well-known Colombian drug dealer and is ready to take him out quickly and easily. However, a few of his former foes stand in the way and an unexpected curveball is thrown Shellhead’s way that changes his approach.

Heroes are a lot like onions. They have layers to their character. At least the good ones do. In my review of the last issue, I talked a lot about Iron Man’s badassery. In this issue, we get more of a compassionate side of our hero, despite the fact that he still tries to put up a hardened shell so no one notices. (We notice, Tony, and we like you for it.)

Although Iron Man shows compassion in this issue, that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t deal out his own brand of justice. When three villains from his rogues gallery, Firebrand, Vibro, and The Living Laser, appear, Stark utilizes yet another new suit of armor to rid the situation of these hindrances. Actually, it’s not really a new armor because the Iron Man stealth armor is somewhat of an old reliable. This one just has some new bells and whistles. As for the bad guys, the trio featured in this issue aren’t exactly Galactus-level threats. They’re second or third tier villains, so they really didn’t put up much of a fight. It was like watching someone with a rope take on Stiltman. Easy pickings. Despite the weak villains and the recycling of armor after the promise of new and exciting ones, the story itself makes up for it all because the ending was just great. It was reminiscent of ‘Wreck-It Ralph’ where we learned that bad guys aren’t always necessarily bad guys.

Overall, this was an okay issue. It was better than a filler, but it wasn’t the best thing to come out this week or even the best issue of this series so far.